


Nine-Tenths of the Law

by countessofbiscuit



Series: Let Me Count The Ways [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Consent Issues, Coruscant Guard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everything Hurts, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Heavy Angst, Painful Sex, Possessive Behavior, Post-Episode: s06e04 Orders, Relationship breakdown, Self-Hatred, Sexual Assault, Sithly Radiation Sickness, Size Difference, Suicide Anxiety, Sympathy, assumed consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:54:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/pseuds/countessofbiscuit
Summary: His holsters had always lent him a certain swagger, had always given her a very indecent and unprofessional thrill. Now she begins to hate how high they sit on his hips, and how he’s only one impossibly quick draw away from kissing her goodbye.
Relationships: Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Series: Let Me Count The Ways [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1866736
Comments: 11
Kudos: 79
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for Banned Together Bingo: Sympathetic Villain.
> 
> Chapters 1 and 2 bookend the events of "Six, Six and a Kiss."

The delphinia behind her desk hung limp, a few leaves browning at the edges. 

Of a hundred things forming the anxious traffic of Riyo’s mind — mostly about Fox, and why he hadn’t come to her last night, or the night before, or the night before _that_ — this gave her pause. The flowers were cuttings from her father’s prize-winning specimen; it’d break his heart to see them wilt. 

She went to water them and allowed herself to tidy the office wet bar, too. Filling the dish-steamer. Rearranging the tumblers that some droid in a hurry had stacked half-dry and sideways. Consolidating the many tea tins Jere had opened indiscriminately. Riyo engaged in everything that presented itself for her perfection, and she still couldn’t shake the uneasiness roiling in her gut. 

Fox had sent her _nothing:_ no word about his whereabouts, no line to explain his absence. Things he’d never failed to send before, busy and harassed and (it often seemed) critical to every command decision on Coruscant though he was. 

She’d been turning their encrypted comm on and off again, compulsively, begging for messages it refused to yield. The same circumspection which prompted Commander Reaper to grant it also governed Riyo’s use of it: it was for emergencies, not amorous chit-chat. Messages wouldn’t keep anyway. She’d sent a fair few though, hoping Fox would see them. Time together had been hard to come by lately. Whatever new unpleasantness was detaining him, how much worse would he find it to feel he wasn’t missed? 

Just as obsessively had Riyo plumbed the planetary news, a catalogue of rotten events, all of which might swallow Fox’s liberty: a gunship collision over the B’ankor Refuge; the escape of a disturbed trooper from Grand Medical; a violent civilian protest at the Manarai barracks, complete with suspected arson. 

Riyo had exhausted all recourse for intelligence. She’d passed the control room more times than was natural, thinking to catch Thire’s eye; he hadn’t looked up. She’d left her office door open for anyone from Choruk who might be on rotation; but they were sadly diminished and scattered by necessity. She’d walked down the Thoroughfare instead of taking the tram, hoping to bump into him — or, failing that, anybody that might kindly explain his absolute comm-silence. She was practiced in the art of making roundabout inquiries. At last, Commander Dodger had made a fortunate appearance; but he was sorry to find her there, so exposed without an escort, and his conversation had been impersonal, clipped, and hushed as he walked her back to the Annex: “Fugitive pursuit, ma’am. Largely resolved, but you know the admin fallout.” 

Riyo did know. That awful incident with Ahsoka three weeks ago had resulted in a flurry of statements, memos, and closeted committees. Fox had intimated the onus on the Guard to perform professional rectitude was just as bad. 

_Intimated._ That was putting it delicately: he’d ranted against that _overprivileged cultist,_ that _casual murderer,_ as if Ahsoka was a stranger to both of them. Riyo had had to close her ears and heart against his justified anger, if only to bear the impossible responsibility of sitting on the jury of a friend; Padmé’s own sense of political expedience had strongly advised her, in the circumstances, against recusal. Date nights were scuppered in the aftermath, but Fox had still sent his stream of typographic hugs and kisses, which Riyo always acknowledged before they expired. He'd still slipped notes between the quartz fangs of the narglatch in her office, so small and finely rolled she had to prise them out with tweezers. Occasionally he’d even called. _Sweetheart, where are you and who else is there?_

Riyo cursed. Her distraction had backfired: she’d overfilled the carafe and before she knew it, she’d overwatered the flowers and the bland carpet too. Requesting its replacement had been on her list; then she’d lost the election and the fittings of this office were suddenly of no consequence at all. 

As she mopped up with a tatty tea towel, wondering if she’d be doing Chi Eekway a favour by letting the stain settle, the door opened. “Yes?” she offered, absently. 

Silence. Strange, for a building where confidences bent around corners. Where every serious proposal was heralded by frantic mumbling or some loud judgement on the latest limmie results. Balling the towel in her hands, Riyo straightened up. 

Fox was standing inside the doorway.

He looked suspended, unsure of something. He hadn’t even removed his helmet; it was usually off as soon as they were alone, now that he’d finally become comfortable around her. One might've even called him forward, if one had a problem with the way he often entered her office and locked the door behind him. The way he rounded on her with a winning smile and provoking intent, stuffing one gloved hand against her mouth and another between her legs until she wetted both with illicit desire. _Here, Fox? — Yes. Here. Now._

“Good afternoon, Commander Fox,” Riyo addressed him, formally, fumbling for the button under her desk. Then, with the door closed, she bolted for the enveloping welcome of his arms. “Oh, my dearest love — !”

Only ... there was no welcome. She might have embraced an effigy, for all the warmth that met her. One hand touched her shoulder. Fox acknowledged her by name. That seemed all he could demand of himself. He was wooden and artificial, like some martinet was watching him. Or his manufacturers. 

Riyo had fallen in love with the focused machismo of this controlled and scrupulously polite man; but it took no lover’s intuition to tell that something was very, very wrong with him. At least he’d been animated after that episode with Ahsoka — spitting-rancor mad, in fact.

“Fox? Has something happened?” Riyo guided him to a sofa when he didn’t reply. “You don’t seem alright. Won’t you sit?”

He sat like he’d forgotten how: unnaturally, heavily, but without an ounce of strength to resist. Eventually, Riyo asked if she might remove his helmet. He didn’t resist that either, even when it took her a full minute to finesse the seal’s mechanisms; she’d never taken this liberty before. 

Fox’s face was haggard, mussed by uncharacteristic stubble. Without his helmet, his jaw seemed to fall slack, and eventually some words found their way out. “Riyo, I ... I think I fucked up.” 

She knelt and gathered his hands. 

“ — made a shiny mistake,” he choked.

Riyo’s scalp tightened in alarm. Most shiny mistakes involved going out of one’s way to get drunk and into trouble. What could _Fox_ have possibly done? He was perfect — he was the _best_ , the acme of excellence. And it was he who shielded shinies from the scrutiny of higher command. Who would shield him? She could do nothing if he was recalled to Kamino; whatsmore, the solemn promise she’d given him to remain aloof would prevent her using leverage she probably didn’t have. Certainly not anymore. 

Riyo tried to swallow her panic. She was running away with herself. Perhaps Fox had done the same. He just needed help in the here and now. Conscious there were things he could not tell her, things she should not ask, she pressed for other facts. When was the last time he’d slept? What was the last thing he’d eaten? What had he taken for the comedown? He didn’t know, he couldn’t remember.

“ … And the men — are Choruk — ” she stuttered, suddenly afraid of the magnitude of what he might say. Hob and Floren were dearly missed, beyond the Guard. What anonymous condolences would she need to write this time? 

Fox shook his head, saying only, “It wasn’t them.” 

Riyo didn’t know what that meant, but his gaze abstracted before she could ask more. He was clearly somewhere else, probably beyond the reach of any help she could render in a public office. Whatever happened in this room, the armor always stayed on — she couldn’t massage this away, as Fox would do if she were overworked and vexed: rubbing her achy bones with strong fingers, with heavy hands that held her firm, grounding her against the likelihood of floating away, so wonderful were his lips along her nape. 

Her uselessness disgusted her. So Riyo made tea, one eye for the boiling water, one eye for the armed man sat stunned and eerily still upon her sofa. And she flung a message to Jere, asking him to clear what remained of today’s diary. Her stomach had twisted even more painfully upon itself, a dense entity of dread. If her mind had been a thoroughfare of every passing worry, it was now a conduit of conjectures, each worse than the last.

Someone must have died. 

He must have killed someone. 

It was a sad reality of Fox’s job. He could admit regret — frequently he did. Was this something else, then? Grappling with _guilt_ for the first time? 

As the tea went cold in his hands, Riyo petted his hair and wondered at her selfishness: to prefer a Fox who killed with impunity, if it meant he came home happy to her. She was upset, unguarded. But her cool head found it hard to dismiss the contrails of warm feelings, and what they betrayed about herself. 

Fox had been called into being to protect the likes of her: it was a purpose Riyo wished she could free him of. She believed in the Republic, but she could admit it was an institution that did not deserve him.

Fox and the caf table continued their silent communion. His face remained a heavy blank. Lines that had held smiles and laughter and life now looked deep with stress. A few grey hairs peppered his solid temples; Riyo kissed and brushed a thumb over the nearer one, like she might love some colour back into it. It was unfair, for someone who’d seen fewer sunsets than her — far fewer, considering his first decade of life. She’d wanted to ensure each was, if not happier, than at least kinder to him than the last. 

But Riyo was at a loss how to turn this one around. If she was sure of anything, it was that Fox shouldn’t be left long to his own devices. Nor should he be allowed onto his bike. 

“Commander,” she began, professionally. Speaking to something fundamental in him and hating herself for it. “I’d be obliged if you would drive me home.” It mattered little that it wasn’t yet three, and that he might still be on duty. He’d surfaced in her office for a reason; it might’ve been the only plea he could make. 

The pedestal could be rocked. The bust on its cap must never be seen to shake.

Fox heeded her request. Fetching her diplomatic speeder. Navigating out of the hive-like Annex speederlot. Merging into the privileged skylane. All offered him simple objectives, even if they only siphoned a fraction of his incredible bandwidth. It might be enough to make a difference — and it left Riyo’s hand free to stroke his gearstick arm, whenever that odd, droidish look overtook him. 

They arrived at her apartments at an unusual hour, well outside her droids’ programming. In their need to hurry inside from the public areas, Riyo hadn’t anticipated the nuisance of being greeted by Nelly, whose receptors couldn’t discern markers of individuality, but could recognize an organic with a clip full of danger. Or the distress it might cause Fox to be so accosted by an autonomous torchère. 

“Mistress Chuchi,” piped the housekeeper droid, illuminating in surprise. “Good afternoon. Your guest is armed and their blasters are fully charged. May I take your cloaks?” 

“No, thank you, Nelly. Please power down. I don’t wish to see you until morning.” No sooner had Nelly had reassumed the guise of an inoffensive candelabra than Abigail whirred in, blue and bubbly, begging to be of assistance with Riyo’s jewellery. She was also gently shooed away. 

Glancing at Fox, who still appeared all at sea in his own skin, Riyo took his hand and ushered him towards the kitchen. She chattered away, attempting a simulacrum of normalcy, which usually saw them rendezvous in the salon for cards and caf and gossip, before hitting the sauna and the mattress — the one stained with the slick and sweat of their first fucks. The order of events was always up for grabs, but these basic components formed many a happy evening. 

She parked Fox at the table. But the fruit bowl would not tempt him, the nut caddy excited no curiosity. He sat insensate. So unlike the first time she’d invited him here, when he’d eaten heartily but with a certain punctiliousness — even when eating her out: obvious but endearing in his inexperience, clearly thinking about the wrong and the right of his technique.

Now, when at last he set upon the leftover barqsotto placed before him, Fox appeared to eat for the motions of eating. Committed to the task only because she was watching. And when he spoke, it was simply to ask for salt the dish didn’t need, and to enquire blandly after her parents, deflecting her anxious looks and making Riyo talk many parsecs 'round the dead wampa in the room. 

How she loved giving him someplace where he might leave his work and his rank at the door. No titles, no ceremony: where he was just Fox and she was just Riyo and he might say as much or a little as he pleased, trusting in the inviolability of her home. But he hadn’t been open these past months, and Riyo couldn’t say she liked it. _I don’t want to talk about it,_ he’d sigh, kicking off his boots. _Not now, Riyo,_ he’d say, collecting her up from the chaise. The less he unburdened, the more it (whatever _it_ was) clung to him like a shadow, like the armor he hadn’t shed in the antechamber, but now sat in with resigned weariness.

Riyo finished Nelly’s polishing for her, while Fox loitered over his half-finished supper like he was avoiding something. She was about to suggest they sauna — it’d been weeks and weeks, and a flush of mindless eustress might purge more than his body. But then he stood, rinsed his bowl, and made to slump upstairs, as though to avoid her, too. 

“Oh, Fox — why don’t you — you can’t go to bed like that,” Riyo fussed, fishing for any feeble excuse to remain with him. Dreading to overcrowd him … but suddenly terrified of leaving him alone. 

Pantoran guards weren’t allowed to take their weapons home.

Fox was in every respect their superior. He represented the discipline of armies and the science of eons finely distilled: balanced to the senses, but volatile in ways that went unseen. And still just a man. 

So Riyo trailed him into the bedroom, attacking his belt from behind as soon as she might. The fear that Fox might be his own next mistake — one he wouldn't live to regret — clenched her heart like an ice-cold fist. “I know you’re tired, but let’s get you comfy,” Riyo said with a homely cheer she didn’t feel. As she placed his holsters in the corner and folded his kama over them, Fox shucked his plates distractedly, ignoring anything like readiness order.

“Would you be so good as to help me with my hair?” she asked quickly. Appealing to his competence. Most desperate for his hands on her. Fox acquiesced, but it was clear he took little joy of it. He didn’t join her on the vanity stool, but remained standing; her hair fell to her shoulders in bunches, one swiftly after the other, without interludes of gentle caresses; he didn’t run his hands through his finished work or stroke the strands between his finger and thumb, as if to polish them into something truly fine. It was done with all the affection a synthdroid might show. When he bent over her, pouring the pins into their jar, Riyo took his arm. She pirouetted to face him, pressing against his broad body and craning for lips that ignored her. “I could run a bath, if you’d like?” she said. Nearer to him, his adrenal funk was obvious.

“Maybe later,” he answered, pulling away for the bedroom. 

Fox heaved himself upon the duvet before Riyo could pull it back or sweep away all the pillows and bolsters and poufs that stood in for him. He flopped down, half-undressed in those rank blacks, and gave a great big bantha sigh. 

With his pistols conveyed to the kitchen, Riyo allowed herself to breathe and allowed Fox to sleep. And he did, for many hours, sprawled facedown in their four-poster where he’d fallen. Each time she checked on him, Riyo thanked her past liberality for going in on such a vast bed, one that bore the entirety of him, that accepted his sore frame with softness. 

And she thanked anyone listening that he was still breathing.

She couldn’t join him just yet. Jere had made her most humble apologies, but politics abhors a vacuum, especially one in a senator’s diary. She took a few calls, added her signature to a bill on crystal energy, and stared at a model of the rehabilitation of the pendle population in Räuru until her eyes crossed and her thoughts diffused.

Her certainty was not what it had been. It'd become as foggy as those plateaus where pendles nested; where the Lights were hidden and the planet seemed to hold its breath, waiting for it hardly knew what. She had hoped to take Fox there — her Fox, who lived under his own cloud, lately. She considered that their apogee of happiness might not be sustainable, after all. That perhaps they’d exhausted their fair share of joy — a generous share, in the circumstances — and that her loss of the election had knelled the end, her appointment as cultural attaché just a reprieve until she had to do the unthinkable: return to Pantora without Fox. 

Riyo didn’t look forward to holding Chi Eekway’s hand as a shadow advisor. It would be an awkward, sideways step in her career. But it offered a good pretext for remaining on Coruscant. And she had hoped, in the easing of critical responsibilities, to spend more time with Fox. No more late-night sessions or emergency votes. Just soirées she could decline, exhibition previews she could ditch after two drinks, and no host of security and monitoring measures. 

She would be, for the most part, a private citizen again. 

It should have presented a horizon of hopeful possibilities. Ones she dared not voice, not yet. Ones she’d made vague provisions for in her arrangement with the Assembly. Ones that very much depended on this war being brought to a speedy conclusion, whatever the outcome. 

Because it was killing Fox.

As the evening closed in and the latticed windows began to glow softly, Riyo returned upstairs, pistols wrapped in a tea towel. She’d wanted to leave them downstairs, behind a creaky gate and at the end of a considerable stretch of floor, in case Fox woke up feeling worse. But it’d be harder to discreetly replace them. She tiptoed into her dressing room and slipped them inside the pockets of her dressing gown — the frilly one that Fox said reminded him of a roobarb and custard twist. Then she let Abigail ready her for bed. The droid’s final instruction before powering down was to fetch a clean set of blacks from the cedar closet and lay them out in the bathroom for Mistress Chuchi’s guest. 

Fox remained deadweight upon the bedding. Riyo brought a throw from another room and draped it over them both. “I love you, Fox,” she whispered, kissing his temple. Even in unhappy evenings, just holding him made its own amends.

Riyo woke suddenly to someone shaking her shoulder. It was Fox. 

“Riyo. Where are my pistols,” he asked, only his armored white chest visible in the darkness. 

Dawn hadn’t risen into the windows. She glanced at the chrono and back at him, confused and bleary-eyed. “You’re leaving now?”

“Yes. Where are my pistols,” he demanded again. 

Riyo clambered out of the bed, agitated by his stern tone. So altered from last night. Not in the least reassuring. But she hadn’t meant to be caught coddling him. He wouldn’t appreciate it. “Umm … in here … ” 

She tripped quickly into her dressing room, heart pounding, Fox’s heavy footfalls crowding her from behind. Her hands shook as she fingered the slippery silken gathers of her gown. Riyo could almost hear him counting the seconds lost to a hypothetical threat. How to explain secreting them away? She’d never even touched them before, even when he’d offered. “I was just — ”

Fox grabbed them from her. “Do _not_ fuck around with these, Riyo.” He shoved them into his holsters. His brow was drawn, his unshaven face rendered severe by her vanity’s light. _“Ever.”_

Riyo’s cheeks burned. She suddenly felt very foolish and exposed in just her undies. “I’ve been worried — ”

“About what?” he snapped. Then, frowning at the window which overlooked the garden — “Something got you spooked?”

Riyo hugged herself, certain she should stop talking now. Her nose stung with upswelling emotion as she dropped her head, begging for his scrutiny to go away.

Perhaps catching the shine in her eyes, something in Fox softened. “Come ‘ere, sweetheart,” he sighed, pulling her into his arms to stroke and kiss her hair. “Sorry I’ve been so absent. I hate it.”

This was what she liked, above all else. Embraced against his cold chest, Riyo blinked back her tears. “Are you feeling better?” she asked, thinking she might try again, gently. He'd put them away; Lights be honored, _he'd put them away._

“Hmm?”

“You weren’t ... you were very out of sorts last night.”

He grunted. “Guess I was just shattered. There was this … just a madman with a blaster. Then some _debate_ in the after-action. Too fucking little, too fucking late, if you ask me. Speaking of late” — Fox paused to kiss her, properly and deeply and full of so much feeling that she was nearly overcome again — “can’t keep the Chancellor waiting at this perfectly social hour.” 

He sounded more like himself. Sardonic. Overburdened with delegated purpose, but damned to get on with it. With some perverse satisfaction did Riyo assume he still had a commission, if he could be so blasé about a midnight executive summons. Maybe it’d just been a misunderstanding and a bad withdrawal, after all. Those damn stims would be the death of him. 

She propped her chin on his chest. She _dearly_ didn’t want to let him go, now that she had him back. “You might’ve shaved, to meet the Chancellor.”

“Maybe this is the new me,” he said. Riyo hoped not; but his smile remained exquisite, amongst it all, and he hugged her even tighter. “I’m in fresh blacks, at least — thank you. No time for a shave. I’ll be back for that bath.” 

“Soon?” 

“Soon. Might even return your speeder myself,” Fox said, kissing her hand as he made to leave. 

Riyo swore, suddenly reminded of her own responsibilities. “No, not you, love,” she assured him. “I forgot to release Ronq yesterday.” Her driver didn’t like being kept waiting, in a holding pattern, or out of the loop. She just had to pray the xexto had assumed no news was good news, or there’d be a stern reminder from the Diplomatic Transit Service in Senator Chuchi’s inbox come morning. 

Fox tutted, shaking his head in mock despair. “Oh, Riyasha, how will she _ever _forgive you for not interrupting her holosoaps?”__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it goes without saying that I do not subscribe to the narrative's posturing of Fox as a villain, or the wider fandom's view of him as such.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox has a possessive streak a little longer than most. And he’s started to believe his girl — that he could _never_ hurt her. Didn’t he make that promise to himself? He remembers that. 
> 
> What he doesn’t remember is holding her that hard.

Fox did not return her speeder. And another lonely month later, he had another very bad day. 

He surprised Riyo on the Annex platform, swooping her home on his bike many hours before she’d expected his company. He surprised her further by mutely shuffling into the house and collapsing in a heap of armor against the shower wall. 

Riyo had lifted his helmet with great trepidation. And by the bleeding Lights, what she found, she’d never forget: Fox’s handsome face inflamed and covered in cuts, his left eye wholly bloodied by blunt trauma, and altogether smelling like he’d been flogged by a drip tray. 

She’d only seen one clone face worse — on Plutonia, because the poor trooper had caught an unlucky spear through the visor. 

It was difficult to imagine anybody who could get that close and brutal to Fox and live to talk about it. Maybe they hadn’t. Or maybe they looked just as bad — 

Exactly the same, even, in every fundamental respect. 

Fox had said he was going to the penthouse. That he was going to spend a night in comradely cheer with his brothers. 

Upon these reflections, Riyo grew too upset to speak. Fox didn’t even try; he just thunked his head against her shoulder and sobbed like a drain. She didn’t know long she held him, offering him imperfect comfort, wanting to vuln her chest that she might restore all the blood he’d shed and spilt. 

He was less inhuman than before; in fact, his voice grew hoarse with apologies — for crying, for spoiling her silk, for ruining her night. Complete kark. But when he finally dried out his pain and agreed to a hot shower, it didn’t renew him. Fox remained silent and shrivelled up around this one, big, awful thing. It joined all the other awful things metastasizing between them, threatening to choke him off from her. 

So Riyo did what she could, beginning with his head. Cosseting it upon her lap to salve his tender face with bacta. It was soothing. Her fingers mindlessly brushed where the tattoos would go, with metals made when the galaxy was young. When things had burned brighter, before the bubblezap of life had gone flat. And she befriended the quiet, telling herself that this too was like the early days — when it’d been all sighs and cuddles between them because everything seemed too precious for words. 

His cock lay upon his hip, sometimes swelling and twitching of its own accord, while Fox remained still beneath her hands. So at peace, not even Nelly’s bringing in the tea things with her tinny voice and twangy joints could disturb him. Riyo had a mind to pleasure him. It’d been forever since she’d been able to return his favors; since she’d been close and personal with those strong legs of his that quivered around her face and under her touch; since she’d held and heightened his pulse in her hands, sucking the sense out of him until he was strung taut, ready to hold the arrow and loose the bow. Riyo could explore her body till the kuvu came home, and she’d never find anything that felt like Fox’s hard cock. Its texture was fascinating, its effect fantastic. She didn’t even mind the aftertaste, though Fox still had reservations and often creamed her breasts instead. 

Relieved she could leave the bacta to one side, that the rest of him was mostly hale and unspoilt, Riyo rubbed his broad chest, smiling. 

_(“These are really quite obscene — you do know that?”_

_“My heart can’t hold it all. Has to store it closeby.”_

_“Hold what?”_

_“My softness for you.”)_

She squirmed out from under him and had gotten as far as his navel, teasing that trailhead to his crotch, when Fox grabbed her wrist. “I’m tired, sweetheart,” he said.

Riyo slumped. “Of course.” 

He tilted his head on the pillow. “Is that tea?”

“Yes. The herbal brew.” 

Fox pulled a face. 

The ground feverpán helped his migraines — when she could get him to drink it. Or when she could sprinkle it into his shakes. Most efficacious in a sauna, but there was no time for that these days. “My father told me what I’ve been doing wrong,” she said. “It should be better now. And you can add as much honey as you like.”

“Maybe later. I feel okay.” 

His head had to feel like a six-speeder pile-up. “Just a thimbleful — ”

“Really, Riyo,” he mumbled, before rolling over. “I’m fine.” 

So she draped herself around him, holding him naked and tight, with those pistols still in the room and that unspoken menace in the air. 

_Too big to fail._ She’d have the thought the same about Fox, once upon a time. It’s what they were saying about the banks and why Riyo woke up early, so she could refresh her ‘pad for any dear-colleague memos. 

Even without a financial crisis, keeping the pod charged and the seat warm still left plenty to do. Twas the season for démarches — when Pantora wanted to send difficult messages to various committees and used their outgoing senator to do it; if they didn’t like what they heard, they wouldn’t see her face again. And there was plenty of time to chew the fat with the latest intern, the daughter of some top fund manager in Peito. Quieter than even Riyo remembered being herself, and she had spent her first two weeks in Amedda’s oppressive, baritone shadow. 

Fox was unusually late to rise. Riding the lifted curfew to the edge. Riyo left the bedroom door open, that the distant din of the caf machine competing with the HoloNews might gently wake him. But still he didn’t stir or come downstairs, and she wondered when Fox had started to feel like a bomb she couldn’t detonate remotely. 

She peeked into the bedroom again — and this time, Fox was listening out for her. Or he’d finally smelled the caf. 

“Riyo?” he mumbled, without moving. “Come here?” 

She tore to the bed, instantly, like Corellia’s hellhounds were after her. She landed on her love in a loving heap, kissing his ears, his neck, his shoulders. Every warm and living part of him she could reach, bathing his bruised body in affection. 

Her silk robe had opened around them, shrouding them in a private cocoon. Riyo had never wanted to be larger. Large enough to cover him, to shield him from whatever griefs had beset him — from whatever had frightened her Fox away from her. It was a lot to ask of a body that Grandmama always said wouldn’t last two winters. 

Indeed, it was Fox who was so much bigger than she. Riyo was reminded of it as he shifted and she slipped from his back into the cleft his bulk made in the mattress. 

As he climbed on top of her, a broad canopy of warmth and safety. 

As his knees spread her legs, so he could plant his solid weight between them. 

As his mouth came down to cover hers, demanding her breath.

As one hand disappeared between them, dispensing quickly with his briefs. 

As it then took careless care of her own boxers, jerking them down at the lace hem with a crude, alien impatience that did not become him. 

And as his cock pressed against her, shoved into her, without so much as a _how d’you do._

A spasm of pain snagged in Riyo’s throat. Her eyes prickled and stung. The silk against her skin was suddenly too hot. Much too hot. 

Solicitude had been somewhat neglected of late. She could admit that much. Fox had been running on instinct, hard drilled by training or not, doing things back-of-mind-front — Riyo could tell by the blankness in his eyes: there was a hollowness behind them where Fox should’ve been and a stranger now resided. And it almost scared her, now, when he still looked like the battered end of a prize fight. 

But he had _never_ snapped like this. Had never so utterly forgotten himself. 

“Riyo ... my Riyo … my sweet Riyo … my perfect girl ... ” Fox murmured, starting to thrust with force, his hands snarled fast into her hair. 

Everything she was was bookended by pain. Riyo ground her teeth, not wanting to interrupt him, not when he _finally_ had something to say: something so sweet, so earnest, so gentle in meaning, even if his actions were anything but. 

… But the grip of their skin — surely there was no pleasure in it, so dry as it was?

It’d be fine. It’d be _perfectly_ fine, if she could — if she could just free her sleeve and force her hand between his pelvis and hers to toy her clit. Then she’d wetten around him and it’d be as wonderful as ever before and —

And it had been some time. 

And she just wasn’t ready. 

_“Ouch.”_

That one word — that one word could not be snatched back. It scratched out from Riyo’s lungs and damned everything that followed. 

Fox froze. 

He raised his head, a horror swelling across his face. 

Then his droidish rigidity returned — if it was possible for a man to be both stiff and fling himself backwards across a room, like he’d taken an electrostaff to the gut. _“Fierfek,”_ he hissed, falling into slang he rarely used.

Riyo scrambled from the bed, panicking at how close he’d come to those holsters hanging from the valet. “It’s nothing — nothing!” she cried, pawing at him, palming his flagging cock. “Really. It was fine, Fox. _I’m fine._ ” 

He grabbed her fingers, hard. “It is _not_ fine Riyo. Stop lying to me. I could have — ... _fuck_ ,” Fox gasped, noticing how easily, how totally her hands disappeared within his. He dropped them, emphatically. His eyes, distraught and wild, landed on her hips. Where the bruises of yesterdays had bloomed. Where he’d held her against the zeal of his armor, after the legislative buzzer had gone and she’d stayed behind and he’d flitted into her office from the service corridor to finger-fuck her into next week. _Come for me, Riyo. I want your bliss on my hands._

Outgoing senators had to get their rocks off somehow. 

Riyo tried to hoist her boxers against his recriminating stare. But she was already small. And she’d only lost weight in the months since the coup of the Papanoida interest and Ahsoka’s panicked misadventure. 

_("Your heat signature would spook at a flurry, child.")_

And Fox was strong. So very strong. He had a grip that showed on Pantoran skin. 

"I need to sort myself out,” he declared, wooden, but quaking like a cane. “I'm not touching you again. Please excuse me.” 

Riyo’s stomach leadened. Her heart sank with the wallpaper.

Here it was. The fatal rupture. The blackening of the sky. Here, in this prettily painted room, because she’d built a dollhouse for him and of course it wasn’t enough. Because she’d been wallowing like a bursa in a spring, unburnt and stupid in the floodlands. 

Riyo hadn’t cried when her cheeks had been twice tattooed; she’d blankly stood her ground before armed warriors; she’d met assassination attempts with an equanimity that had earned her many icy nicknames. 

But a frenzy overcame her, just then. Tears that had been mustered countless times for Fox grew tired of waiting. Hardly knowing if she spoke in sentences, in Basic or Pantoran, she wailed. She flailed. Pleading about her love for him while Fox just shrugged her off. She squeezed every part of him, her desperate fingers slapped away by plastoid, until Fox was sealed away in armor. Untouchable. Unreachable. 

Mysticks spoke of haunting as something terrifying for the living; but in that moment, Riyo sympathised with the horror of the dead — unheeded, ignored, their sincere screams unregarded by the strictly rational of this plane. 

Riyo had never been afraid of what she did not know. _Seedlings can’t stay forever in the dirt; they let the dark direct them towards the sun._ But. But, but, but — 

What had they done to him? What had those wretched cloners planted in her Fox, that was eating him from the inside out? 

Fox’s fog had seized him by the brain again — worse, for it didn’t acknowledge her at all. And once he’d kitted up, he shoved past her. Then he was down the stairs, through the salon, and out into the garden, as though to mount his bike and make a clean break of it all through the premium glass. 

Anyone with the tech to permeate that transparisteel’s warrantied privacy films would’ve been richly compensated with tabloid fodder. Ronq would've paid good credits for it: a young senator, her face splotchy and smeared with anguish, running topless from her mansion to hang from an agitated clone commander, the hem of her couture knickers torn and dangling as she frantically fought for his hands, for his heart, until he fell to his knees in the fine turf, sobbing with feeling that must have been expensive to install. 

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong, my love?” she chanted. 

“Me,” he echoed. 

Riyo shook her head against his. “Everything _but_ you.” 

“I’m fucked up. I — I hurt _you._ ” 

“You didn’t mean to.”

Fox’s face found the ground. “That’s what scares me,” he whimpered.

There was nothing to do but to hold him. Since he wouldn’t hold her. But he wouldn’t stay for long. 

Eventually, Fox composed himself, just enough to help Riyo to her feet and apologize for having caused her pain. How miserably did she become Senator Chuchi again, casually waving such contrition aside, while her cunt still throbbed with the rawness of him. 

But how she wept and despaired all that awful day, after Fox had bowed and silently swept away, without once looking back. 

And how she suddenly hated that bed, too big for just her, alone.


End file.
